Circular Conversations
by imsosrsly
Summary: In which Kyle attempts to persuade Kenny out of being such a deadbeat roommate, and Kenny does what he always does – keeps the hell outta dodge in the best way he knows how. (Painfully real talk at the beginning; fluffier shit at the end. K2. Rated for cursing.)


A/N: Hey look, I actually wrote something.. (That's what a little bit of vodka and one real life argument will get you: some good creative inspiration.) Painfully real talk at the beginning; fluffier shit at the end. K2. Fanart credit goes to !tuna1810 (I think?) I hope you like it!

Title: **Circular Conversations**

Summary: _In which Kyle attempts to persuade Kenny out of being such a deadbeat roommate, and Kenny does what he always does – keeps the hell outta dodge in the best way he knows how.  
_

* * *

I hate talking to him about this. Seriously, it's like I'm forever stuck in déjà vu here – he responds the same way every time, but for some reason I keep expecting something different. Like, I try to sit down and have an honest conversation with him, and what do I get? A blatant disregard for all the things I do for him. A rebuttal that talking about it stresses him out. A weak promise that he'll get it done; dude, stop worrying about it; _shut the hell up Kyle you're pissing me off._

He's not paying his half of the rent though. He hasn't _been _paying his half of the rent for a while now, and he's probably not ever going to pay his half of the rent (or the money he owes me for the past six months we've been living together already) because he doesn't have a job!

Okay, that isn't true – he did finally land a job working at the gas station down the street a few days ago. But guess what? He's only going to be working there _one day a week._ I understand that it's not his fault that they can't afford to give him more hours since he was only hired on for part-time anyway. But still, it's enough to make my blood boil. I presently work TWO jobs to make up for what he can't afford right now. He has no excuse. _None_.

But this is what I get when I try to tell him so:

"Kyle, man, what is _with_ you this month? I got the job didn't I?"

I fold my hands neatly onto my lap, one on top of the other, in order to stay as calm as possible. Kenny is sitting at our tiny, round dinner table in the kitchen, directly across from where I'm sitting. He looks rather bored, and there had been a hint of suspicion in his voice just now. "Yes, you did," I reply casually, "and I'm very proud of you for—"

"Could you lay off the pressure then? You're not my mother."

I hate it when he interrupts me like that. "No, but I _am _your roommate, in case you'd forgotten, and I still need your half of this month's rent by tomorrow. Do you have it?"

He hesitates only slightly. "Dude, you know I haven't even started work yet."

"Yes. I know. And I also know that you didn't start work last month, or the month before that, or the month before that."

"I put in like, fifteen applications! And _nobody_ was hiring."

"The call center was hiring. Why didn't you try there?" I couldn't help the slight bit of irritation that crept into my tone. Kenny clearly noticed it; his expression darkened.

"It wouldn't have made a difference. Not to you. _Would_ it? If I'd applied there too and they weren't hiring, that would just be hours of effort wasted on my part – because if those other fifteen failed apps didn't count, one more sure as hell wouldn't. Am I right?"

I couldn't believe what I was hearing – never mind the fact that everything he'd just said was a blatant string of lies. "Of course they mattered! Every one of those applications could have been 'the one', Kenny!" He rolls his eyes. _Rolls his little blue eyes _at me! The nerve… "How many of them did you call back?" I shoot back, clearly getting aggravated with him at this point. I cross my arms in front of my chest matter-of-factly because I know what he's going to say. I can already tell this is going to be a battle that leaves us both feeling sorry for ourselves (and each other), worn out for no reason…

"I called back the ones that I thought I had a snowballs chance in hell of getting. Some of those clearly told me they weren't hiring, Kyle. There wasn't any point."

"That doesn't matter though! What if they were testing you? What if they only wanted to see if you would call them back or not? You didn't, so clearly that must mean you didn't want it badly enough."

Kenny half-snorts and gets up to wander over to the food cabinet, ignoring me now. He opens the left side and rummages around in it until he finds a chicken and mashed potatoes mini-dinner (the Compleat brand; those are actually mine – I use them to pack my lunch at work – but I don't say anything. I'm too angry, and saying anything at this point would cause a fight). After a minute or two, he says, "You sound so ridiculous dude. Come on. I wouldn't have bothered putting in the applications in the first place if I wasn't fucking interested, and they _know_ that, okay? It's just bad timing is all. Lay off my case."

I close my eyes and breathe evenly through my nose. I count: 1…2…3…4…5… ... 6... … 7... …and I keep counting until the spaces of silence between the numbers have dulled the anger and hurt in my chest to a tolerable level. Why was this subject so difficult to talk about? All I wanted was for him to try a little harder, so that maybe something decent would come through, and I could be a little less stressed! Something _had _to come through soon. I'd kick him out if it didn't.

"Kenny," I say softly. I watch him take his meal over to the microwave, tear off the cardboard on the outside, open a drawer to get a fork and then viciously stab more than enough holes into the top of it. His expression is utterly neutral as he does so. I clear my throat a bit. "Kenny I'm not trying to—"

"Would you please _shut up?_ I already heard what you had to say, all right? Like, ten times I've heard it this month. You're starting to tick me off about it, so just drop it. Jeez..." He puts the mini-dinner into the microwave and sets the timer, then leans against the countertop, his hands buried deep into the pockets of his ripped up jeans.

"But I still feel like you don't understand how important this is – not just for me, but for the both of us. The bottom line is that I'm paying for _everything. _I'm out there spending 70% of my week working my ass off, and for what? So you can sit in the living room and play Xbox. Hell, I even had to apply for food stamps the other day because I couldn't afford groceries for the both of us anymore!" I throw my hands up in exasperation because all I can think about right now is how much he looks like he doesn't care.

"Yeah, I know. Mom said she saw you at the office the other day."

"Kenny, this is not a joke!"

"I wasn't making one." He raises his eyebrows at me as the microwave beeps, then turns to go back to his meal.

I try to breathe evenly again, but this time it doesn't help. I can feel my eyes stinging from his reaction. He just seems so aloof – about everything, not just this job crisis or even our argument. He's Kenny. He's supposed to be fun and funny and optimistic, but he's mostly just distant nowadays… and it puts me in such a strange position that I feel like I don't know how to act around him anymore. Yet he knows how to quiet me with just a few words. He makes me feel like _I'm _the one acting like a child. When we were kids, it was the other way around… I feel like it should still be the other way around, but I don't say anything else about it.

It's stupid. _I_ should be the one telling _him_ to shut up; he's not the one in a thousand dollars of credit card debt because of vehicle malfunctions and insurance payments that he can't afford. He's not the one trying to juggle two jobs with a full-time college schedule. HE'S NOT DOING ANYTHING. (Well, except for mooching off me that is...)

I bite my tongue a moment longer just to see what he does. Of course, what he does is extremely typical: he brings his food back to the table and eats it quietly, looking for all the world as if he has not a damn care on his shoulders. Not one. No problems in Kenny's world; he must have reached nirvana or something.

Suddenly I'm not angry anymore. I don't feel anything now.

"Kenny, I'm giving you one more month to find another job, okay?"

He looks up at me. I stare back at him, meeting his gaze evenly. "That's what you said before," he murmurs, a kind of partly-sad, partly-intrigued tone glazing over his words. "Do you mean it this time?" His voice like that makes my skin crawl.

"I meant it then, too. You actually found a job though—"

"Yeah, like…two whole months after your first deadline." A little smirk sneaks onto his lips, which he quickly covers up by taking another bite of chicken. Is he really going there right now?

"That was… I didn't— I mean, everything you said, you know – and I knew you were trying, and we…" I let my own voice trail off into a similar tone as Kenny's and look down, away from him. It's at this point that I know he's caught me. "We have a lot of fun, don't we?" I say with a smirk of my own. I can feel my numbness start to melt away.

"Damn skippy, dude. I couldn't ask for a better roommate, you know."

Damnit. Fucking shit cock damnit to fucking hell and back _damn damn damn why does he fucking do this to me?! _I literally have to bite my lip to keep myself from outright smiling. He's already smiling, the jackass…

He's right though. We _do _have a lot of fun together (in more ways than one, too). And I guess… I guess in a lot of ways, I do let him take advantage of me. Clearly I care about that as a problem and I want to fix it – I wouldn't have these conversations with him or bring it up at all if I didn't – but I don't have time to find another roommate. It's too much effort. And anyway, I don't want one. I want Kenny to be my roommate. I just also want him to be good one...

Maybe he was right about those call backs too. Maybe it didn't matter. Maybe I do stress out a lot over nothing. Or maybe it's something worth stressing over. Maybe I just like to let him take advantage of me. But maybe I don't want him to. And maybe I don't care anymore…don't want to care.

I don't know.

See? What did I say earlier: feeling sorry for myself and worn out for no reason? Totally called it.

I can feel my slight burst of optimism suddenly crashing like the Hindenburg. My conscience rears its ugly head again, and with it the nagging feeling that I shouldn't let Kenny take advantage of me. I put my head in my hands, fingers sifting through my mass of red curls, and lean my elbows up on the table. _This isn't worth it,_ I tell myself. _It's not worth the confusion, the time and money wasted...HE'S NOT WORTH IT. _(I'm lying though.)

Now I just feel drained and…like I'm a bad friend or something. Like Kenny had cast some sort of spell on me to render my entire argument useless against him, and now I'm suffering from some aftereffects. I feel like it's my own fault I'm so stressed instead of his…

Then I hear Kenny's chair scoot back against the tiles of the kitchen floor. He must have walked over to me not a moment later, because the next thing I know his arms are around me and his chin is pressed onto my shoulder and his lips are on my neck… His tongue slips out to press hard against the chills breaking out on my skin and my heart is beating like a caged bird longing for flight and _oh my god, _that feels good...

Kenny whispers against my quickly beating pulse, "You're gonna have to learn to handle fate better, dude. Trust me. It's tough, but we got this. I do it all the time. You just gotta wait it out. It'll get better, I promise."

"Fate…?" I have no idea what he could possibly be talking about, but I nod like I do. His teeth sample a small section of my skin, causing me to gasp aloud in surprise. It seems as though he just enhanced his spell tenfold.

Then Kenny chuckles and pulls away, patting my shoulder with his hand. "Seriously. We got this. Don't worry about it so much."

I wished so much that our conversations didn't always end in me feeling like I'm dazed and hungover, and him sounding like he couldn't be happier. But that's how they always do. And if I'm not going to kick him out, and he's not going to try any harder, I guess this is just the way things are going to be.

Fate he called it... Maybe so. I suppose I'll just have to learn to deal with it, or learn to change – one or the other.

Too bad either way, I still feel like I'm screwed.

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_Thank you for reading~_


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